Introduction — The End of the Development-Security Nexus?

This article introduces Development Dialogue 58, which departs from the fact that thinking and policy on 'development' and 'security' have undergone paradigmatic shifts in recent decades. The well-known merger of development and security into a 'development-security nexus' is now shifting towards an increasingly institutionalized securitization. Security is everywhere, and development is security. A new discourse and practice is arising as the meaning of these concepts shift and the referents and objects of development and security are changing. Gradually we are moving beyond the development-security nexus into the reign of continuous global disaster management. These new articulations of the development-security nexus and global disaster management have served to legitimize a more radical interventionist agenda – first and foremost carried out by the West in the Global South. With thought-provoking contributions by leading authorities in this burgeoning field, this volume makes sense of the aforementioned paradigmatic shift. The articles in this issue explore the rationale and forces behind the institutionalization of interventionism and intrusive disaster management as well as the consequences thereof in a number of policy domains and cases